Chapter 44

CHAPTER XLIV.

SUNNY LANDS IN THE BLUE MEDITERRANEAN

When I opened my eyes again I felt myself grasped by the belt withthe strong hand of our guide. With the other arm he supported myuncle. I was not seriously hurt, but I was shaken and bruised andbattered all over. I found myself lying on the sloping side of amountain only two yards from a gaping gulf, which would haveswallowed me up had I leaned at all that way. Hans had saved me fromdeath whilst I lay rolling on the edge of the crater.

"Where are we?" asked my uncle irascibly, as if he felt much injuredby being landed upon the earth again.

The hunter shook his head in token of complete ignorance.

"Is it Iceland?" I asked.

"_Nej,_" replied Hans.

"What! Not Iceland?" cried the Professor.

"Hans must be mistaken," I said, raising myself up.

This was our final surprise after all the astonishing events of ourwonderful journey. I expected to see a white cone covered with theeternal snow of ages rising from the midst of the barren deserts ofthe icy north, faintly lighted with the pale rays of the arctic sun,far away in the highest latitudes known; but contrary to all ourexpectations, my uncle, the Icelander, and myself were sittinghalf-way down a mountain baked under the burning rays of a southernsun, which was blistering us with the heat, and blinding us with thefierce light of his nearly vertical rays.

I could not believe my own eyes; but the heated air and the sensationof burning left me no room for doubt. We had come out of the craterhalf naked, and the radiant orb to which we had been strangers fortwo months was lavishing upon us out of his blazing splendours moreof his light and heat than we were able to receive with comfort.

When my eyes had become accustomed to the bright light to which theyhad been so long strangers, I began to use them to set my imaginationright. At least I would have it to be Spitzbergen, and I was in nohumour to give up this notion.

The Professor was the first to speak, and said:

"Well, this is not much like Iceland."

"But is it Jan Mayen?" I asked.

"Nor that either," he answered. "This is no northern mountain; hereare no granite peaks capped with snow. Look, Axel, look!"

Above our heads, at a height of five hundred feet or more, we saw thecrater of a volcano, through. which, at intervals of fifteen minutesor so, there issued with loud explosions lofty columns of fire,mingled with pumice stones, ashes, and flowing lava. I could feel theheaving of the mountain, which seemed to breathe like a huge whale,and puff out fire and wind from its vast blowholes. Beneath, down apretty steep declivity, ran streams of lava for eight or nine hundredfeet, giving the mountain a height of about 1,300 or 1,400 feet. Butthe base of the mountain was hidden in a perfect bower of richverdure, amongst which I was able to